The Yellow House

Looking back on a few months of The Yellow House, I’m starting to realize that the life I portray here is one where I spend my days traipsing around farmers’ markets, puttering in my little garden, meditating on baking, throwing dinner parties where everyone drinks too much wine, and then documenting it all with excessive parentheticals, too much strikethrough, extra-long sentences, and mediocre photos.

I mean, I actually do all of those things.

It’s just that all the traipsings and putterings and meditations and dinner-partyings are only the tip of the iceberg. The majority of my time is spent at a Serious Job where I work 9 to 5 (or, more unofficially and far too often, 7 to 7). I guess that “traipsing” is just more poetic to write about than “sitting in my rolling chair in my office” (although it was really exciting when I got to switch from a stationary chair to a wheeled one—but I’ll save that story for another day, you lucky reader).

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Lately, it seems like everyone is stumbling upon awesome late-winter citrus but me. Intensely-moist blood orange recipes are showing up everywhere, from Smitten Kitchen’s blood orange olive oil cake to Rachel Manley’s orange and almond cake. And gosh darn it, I wanted to make something amazing out of blood oranges too.

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I’ve never been a huge pizza fan. I’m not really sure why–the main ingredients make up the majority of my diet: bread, veggies, and cheese. I think all of the greasy, gluey abominations out there—and living one memorable year in college with four boys who ate them often—ruined the idea of pizza for me. But in recent years, I’ve started to warm up to the idea of fresh, thinner-crust, neapolitan style pizza.

After reading Smitten Kitchen’s awesome post(s) about simple pizza in your own kitchen, I went home after work one day and made one for Ben and Chuck. It was good. Really good. But the crust wasn’t quite right. I resolved to try again, soon. And trying again became somewhat of an obsession, as the following night’s pizza was also really good…but what if I added lemon zest to the ricotta? and what if we used a honey & wine pizza dough recipe?

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